Going to Extremes

Colorado is normally dry this time of year. But, this summer it's both extremely dry and unusually hot. We heard about all the wild fires out west before we moved from Morocco. We just didn't think it would be in our neighborhood. No one ever does. Until Saturday, when a fire started extremely close to us.

 Instead of packing things up and evacuating, we breathed in the fresh paint fumes that filled our house from the two previous days of coloring our world. I colored our living room plum, which actually was more grape jam before resorting to cranberry, which  is only slightly less hideous. I really should learn stay in the lines when I color.  I hope that I'll redeem myself on Tuesday when Spicy Cayenne goes up on the wall.  That is if our whole house doesn't go up.  In flames. Then we won't have to worry about it. Or whether those pictures we hung are indeed straight. So really either way, it's pretty win-win. (Although I did call my home owners insurance company just to make sure of that.)



Saturday was also Jade's 11th birthday and she was set to have 4 girlfriends over for a sleepover, which of course didn't happen. But, the girl who never asks for anythings wasn't upset about that. Instead, she was extremely concerned that the city left a lot of dead branches behind our property after cutting them down to curb the mistletoe infestation. I know that sounds really festive and probably a bit risque. For humans. But, for trees, mistletoe can be fatal. The kiss of death, in fact.



We've been watching the fire for two days now. Waiting for a mandatory evacuation. with little to do besides home improvement projects. The timing seems a little more than a little counter-intuitive. The kids are hot, bored and frustrated because many of their friends have already evacuated. It's 100 degrees and we don't have air conditioning and the pool we frequent is closed due to the fire's threat. Frankly, I'm feeling more imminent danger from the threat that my kids may kill each other. Not that that's not a possibility on any given day or anything. Add the heat index to the unspoken nervous chatter in the air and it’s a recipe for disaster.



As for me, I'm pondering why Americans are obsessed having a full water full to the brim at a restaurant. Not only is there a shortage of clean water around the world, but there is a drought that has resulted in a fire right here threatening our homes. And yet we still deny global warming and carry on with the American way of life as usual. Reckless and unfathomable don’t begin to describe the extent of our denial.